


Artemis and Iphigenia at Aulis

by sparklight



Series: Iliou Persis [2]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Tragedy, Animal Sacrifice, Betrayal, Epic Cycle, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Trojan War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29684058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklight/pseuds/sparklight
Summary: Winds rise at Aulis in response to Agamemnon's hubris.It's a mistake that has to be paid for, in blood, trust, and lives, but there is still a choice involved. For the war to happen, for Helen to return to Sparta and Menelaos, for glory and wealth to be won, there's only one answer to that choice, and Agamemnon sacrifices both his parental love and his daughter at the same time.Girls' lives are cheap, but for once Artemis doesn't drive the arrow home.
Relationships: Agamemnon & Iphigenia (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Apollo & Artemis (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Artemis & Iphigenia (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Clytemnestra & Iphigenia (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Series: Iliou Persis [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789012
Kudos: 7





	Artemis and Iphigenia at Aulis

The Achaeans had gathered at Aulis once more.

Hera and Poseidon were completely insufferable each in their own way, Athena not quite so obvious but still pleased for the progress towards their champions landing on Troy's shores. Apollo silently, and perhaps pettily, reminded himself that from here there was yet ten years of fighting still to pass before anything might be made sure at all. 

They might have once again been ready to sail out after five years, but this was not over. It'd barely begun, in fact.

His shoulders easing down with that thought, Apollo stared narrowly at the current target he and his sister were both attempting to hit first, and it was a true challenge. A golden, metal deer of clever springs and cogs and divine will animating it, Hephaistos so kindly having provided them a very peculiar target to try their skill against. It could move as a real animal might in one moment, and then in the next its movements would be quick and jerky, paying no heed to animal constraints of flesh, tendons, and skeleton. It was never certain who of them might hit the deer first, and that made it a joy to pitch themselves both against the deer and each other.

At the moment, however, it was far more serving as distraction than contest. From the smugness suffusing the air from the gods on the Achaeans' side, from the gathering below at Aulis.

Apollo let his arrow fly, silver in the early afternoon light, but Artemis' golden arrow shot down to bury itself at her feet as she jerked. Apollo blinked, watching his own arrow pierce the deer’s ear. Not its head, like he’d intended. Annoying, but Apollo dismissed it and glanced to his sister.

"I believe y---"

"How _dare he_!" 

Artemis' previously razor-edged but placid presence roared into the chill threat of moonlight over a battlefield, two armies camped at either end, facing each other and awaiting death. 

Apollo, no matter how startled, if not by Artemis' temper as such, then its sudden conflagration, whirled around, already running back towards the benches set up around the trees behind them. Stopped and allowed himself an exhale of real breath, relieved to see both Erato and Urania had moved in front of Hyacinthus to shield the immortal human from Artemis' fury. Hyacinthus might not die from such, being immortal, but he was human and could still be injured by the Deathless Ones in ways not even lesser gods and daimones would.

" _Sister_ ," Apollo snapped, nascent sympathy and fingers eager on his bow for whatever might help soothe her still pushed back by the wave of relief for and anger over the risk to Hyacinthus. "Artemis. What happened that'd bring you to mishoot an arrow?"

Talking calmed him down, reminded him he could feel Hyacinthus across the stretch of grass, perfectly fine and in no pain at all, and so when Artemis turned to him with her bright blue eyes glinting like the light on the blades of spears, Apollo came forward to lay a land on her shoulder. Artemis shifted her weight into his grip, but she was looking beyond him, past their palace and towards Zeus'.

"Agamemnon, lord of men and aspiring to bring one of your beloved cities down, oh little brother, thought it suitable to claim he was a better hunter than I! Taking down a deer within my own sacred precinct, no less!" Artemis huffed, her voice going from silk-covered, polished metal dripping with menace into a huff. It was the sort of sound that might make one think her exasperated more than angry, but those blue eyes were narrowed now, and her teeth bared.

" _Mortals_." Apollo rolled his eyes, squeezing Artemis' shoulder once more. They always did this. He plain didn't understand how it kept happening, again and again. But then, when they treated their own just the same, perhaps it wasn't so strange they would do the same to the gods in moments of thoughtless anger or triumph. Even when they very well knew that it would draw ire and retaliation, and compared to other humans, against the gods even the most powerful of kings could do nothing.

"Exactly," Artemis said, her bared teeth turning into a bared blade of a smile. "But I think I have a solution that might restore my dignity and honour as well as solve this unpleasant situation before anything can happen beyond what already has."

Artemis paused, reaching over to cradle Apollo's cheek. All that anger turned into something quieter as she shook her head. "I should much rather see neither you nor Mother unhappy."

It wasn't that Troy didn't pay special attention to Artemis as Apollo's sister, the same as they did to Leto for the reason both of her connection to him and as a goddess in her own right, and Troy was a lovely city she delighted in. It was, still, Leto and Apollo to whom Troy mattered more. Artemis' delight was more in the land around it, the swaying pine forests and rocky meadows of Mount Ida, the river plains around the Scamander and Simoeis.

Eyeing the golden arrow buried more than halfway up its shaft in rich earth and swaying grass, then up at the metal deer prancing in teasing enticement across the field, Artemis smiled once more, and it was terrible.

"Come then. This'll require we join the others even if I _wasn't_ doing more than necessary," she said, closing her eyes for a moment.

Apollo cocked his head, watching Artemis' expression turn nearly tranquil for as long as it took for the sweetly warm wind to gain a biting edge and become brisk. The whistle of it promised anger on the lands below Olympos, and Apollo smiled faintly, holding his arm out for Hyacinthus to join them now that Artemis had control of herself once more. She was still a brand in the aether, sharp and bright, but only standing right next to her would cause real damage to a human, and Hyacinthus was on the other side of Apollo.

Hyacinthus slid easily in next to him, an arm loose about Apollo's waist and Apollo's arm around his shoulders in turn. He didn't speak until he had to disentangle himself when they reached the council hall. He couldn't enter, not when a council was in session and he hadn't been invited.

"What did she do?" he whispered, giving a last lazy little stroke to Apollo's flank before he pulled his arm back, and Apollo grinned, nearly as sharply as his sister.

"Raised winds against Agamemnon for his insult, and it's not as if Hera can say anything against it." He paused, eyeing the door. "Though how she might intend to use that to cut this short, I haven't quite figured."

It would be clear soon enough, and Apollo resisted the urge to lean down and steal a kiss only for the time it might take, as he'd already lingered. Catching Hyacinthus' fingers to briefly squeeze them, he followed Artemis inside and sat down on his throne. Artemis remained standing in front of her own throne, hands on her hips and feet planted broadly on the intricate tile floor.

"King Agamemnon of Mycenae has insulted me, and the fleet won't be sailing until he has redressed it," Artemis proclaimed, her voice ringing out through the council hall. Her gaze was on Zeus, but Apollo could feel her smug, pointed attention on Hera. He didn't doubt her care for either him or their mother, but Artemis probably exulted in the opportunity to make trouble for the Queen of the Gods, and without any real protest being able to be lodged against it.

"Of course, daughter," Zeus said, and though the dip of his head, great as it was, was no deeper than it needed to be, and his voice was smoothly neutral, the gleam in his gray eyes was undoubtedly pleased. Artemis didn't smile, but the light in her eyes, already sharp, glittered.

"His payment," Artemis continued, gravely serious despite the hunter's gleam in her eyes, "shall be his daughter Iphigenia, sacrificed to me if he wishes to sail for Troy."

Apollo froze, surprised. The rest of the gods shifted on their thrones, a couple mutters following, along with narrowed gazes thrown Artemis' way, but none of them truly understood. Artemis had been delighting in that girl for a couple years now. Had herself given her a bow just as recently as a year and a half ago, after one of the maiden dances in Artemis' honour. Why would she demand Agamemnon sacrifice _that_ one of his daughters, if any at all? He had several, as well as a son now, too, didn't he?

Apollo remained quiet. Others, however, did not.

"Your anger should surely be propitiated and the insult redressed, Letois," Hera snapped, her hand tight about her sceptre and her brown eyes flashing. She undoubtedly didn't like giving Artemis even that much, at least on the council, in this situation. "But surely the insult isn't so exceptional that it require such drastic measures to soothe it."

"You misunderstand, Queen Hera," Artemis said, sweet as rotting meat, "if he wishes to _sail to Troy_ he will sacrifice his oldest. If he sails home, the winds will not stop him. Father?"

Artemis looked to no other as she met her father's gaze, and Zeus, ignoring Hera, nodded in agreement. "It's a reasonable trade off, and a recompense given either way."

Apollo looked past his sister to Zeus, and in the brief moment their gazes met, his father's gray eyes spoke of grim acceptance and reluctant hope both. Zeus clearly didn't think this would stop anything, but some part of him still wished it would, to save Troy. Artemis turned and left, and Apollo, making no excuses for either of them, followed her. He might have stayed, if only because the argument that would come from this might be amusing to listen to when there was no taking back what Artemis had demanded and gotten, but he needed to know.

"Artemis, _Iphigenia_?" The incredulity in his voice seemed to stop her more than the question had, and she turned to face him with a roll of her eyes.

"Please, Apollo. It's obvious, isn't it? Unless he, Iphigenia's own father, who loves that girl from all I've heard from her, and the rest of the army, are animal brutes willing to give an innocent life of their own, she will be fine." Artemis jerked her head to the side, the trailing strands of hair that always escaped the headband and whatever other bonds she might use dancing with the movement. "If they don't go, Agamemnon and everyone giving up the war is my redress. If they do go, I will, of course, not suffer that girl dead either way, but they will be left thinking they have killed her. If they are willing to go through with killing an innocent of their own for the innocents they will kill abroad, they have shown themselves for what they are, and Iphigenia deserves better than that."

Her eyes like moonlight on ice, Artemis turned to continue back towards their palace, beckoning Apollo and Hyacinthus to follow her with a flick of her hand.

"Either way he should hopefully have learned what he ought to already know; opening that big, bearded gob of his and insulting me, one of the Deathless Ones, has a cost."

Two weeks later, and the Achaean fleet was still at Aulis, the winds still turned against the ships.

Yesterday, Iphigenia and her mother had arrived, to what had seemed a flower-garlanded preparation for marriage. Artemis sneered at her garlanded altar, and in the end she wasn't really surprised, but she'd hoped for different. For better. Clearly she'd been foolish to hope. Staring at the polished stone shadowed under the old plane trees that stood sentinel around the altar, Artemis wondered how easy the decision had been. For all of them, but mostly for Agamemnon. Ah, girls' lives were cheap, weren't they? Perhaps especially before marriage. She wondered if Hera and Athena had had to harden any hearts, or if this was the true, obsidian depths of these men's hearts. 

Perhaps it didn't matter. 

There was a doe stood next to the altar, trembling and smothered in a glittering haze of misdirection and refusing sight of what would otherwise have been in plain view. In a couple hours, barring any miraculous change of mind to the whole army, a girl would lay bleeding out on that altar.

It just wouldn't be Iphigenia.

Not that anyone knew that, and no one would tell them, either. Not Iphigenia herself, not Klytaimnestra, not Agamemnon or Menelaos and certainly not anyone else in the army. If Hera and Athena suspected Artemis truly wasn't going to allow Iphigenia to die - which some of their arguments in the two weeks hence had certainly implied - Zeus hadn’t given them leave to indicate otherwise, and they hadn't been able to reveal what they couldn't be sure of to Agamemnon.

The Achaeans only knew what Kalchas had told them, and Apollo would certainly not give more in his oracle than Artemis had proclaimed at the council with Zeus' agreement. What they knew, then, was that if they wished the winds to turn so they could sail to Troy, Iphigenia had to die.

Blooming, fourteen year old Iphigenia, who had been filled with as much dread as cautious interest at the prospect of marrying Achilles, Achaea's best and brightest and, certainly, probably the most handsome too. Now, that shy, blushing thought made her a laughingstock, if only in her own mind, for having thought it. Achilles hadn't known, of the intended marriage or of the ruse that it really was, and while that then revealed the deception for what it was, Iphigenia wasn't certain it wouldn't have been kinder if the reveal hadn't happened at all.

She would rather have gone to death unknowing, even if being led to Artemis' altar would have been strange for what was to be a wedding. The confusion would have been short-lived, and her fear even more short-lived if she hadn't known.

Her mother was screaming. 

She'd started frozen-voiced and coldly furious after the initial shock of the reveal, and that was scary but familiar. Her mother had always burned cold with anger like that. Her father hadn't budged, and now, her mother was screaming. There were scratches, and not shallow ones, down her father's cheek and arms, and her uncle had burst in and wrestled her still with his arms around her; her father hadn't touched her other than attempting to hold his wife off.

And her mother was still screaming, hurling invective and curses that only barely avoided calling on the Furies and the King and Queen of the underworld, if only, probably, because Iphigenia was right there to hear and her mother didn't wish her to hear such things.

Iphigenia didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear anything of this, even less the way her mother's voice was breaking through her words, fury, betrayal and grief all muddling together. She couldn't even recognize her mother like this.

She wanted it to stop.

"Father, _please_!" Iphigenia flew forward after having kept herself at the back of the tent, cringing away at any attempt by anyone to approach her. She threw herself down onto the ground, clutching the hem of the kilt and her father's knees. "W-why?"

She'd had had any number of words lined up, a whole speech of them, and now they all fled for that one, single question. 

One her mother had already asked, then demanded, then accused, but Iphigenia thought she had a right to ask it as well. How could he do this? How could any of them? Achilles had been angry at the subterfuge and his own, unknowing part in it, as well as anger on her behalf, but he had, in the end, not tried to stop this. Not from what Iphigenia knew, and she couldn't even feel particularly upset about it. Not when it was her father who should be her staunchest defender, and here he was looking down at her with an empty, distant look in his eyes that chilled her to her core.

"I have no choice, Iphigenia." He reached for her cheek and Iphigenia cringed away, then beat his knees before she twisted away to attempt to hide the renewed well of tears.

No choice? How could Artemis demand this? _Why_ would she? She'd run alongside the goddess for years, now, though keeping it secret. Most of the time there weren't even other nymphs along with them, and now this? Why would Artemis do this to her?

"Iphigenia---"

"Do not talk to her!" her mother hissed above her, and Iphigenia sobbed, both glad for the shield of her mother's rage and wishing for the aching hesitation in her father's voice to mean something. "What right do you have, when you've decided on this course of action?"

He had.

But even if her father had, Artemis surely wouldn't. The thought flooded her, if not with calm, then some fragile sense of determination. Iphigenia hiccuped and stood up, chin raised high but her hands trembling as they twisted in the fall of her dress, her fingers worrying the stripe that ran up along the side of it.

"If m-my father, has d-decided that this is what he wants of me, I will go. If my father decides my marriage, he'll decide my death, too. Just pl-please don't tie me up like an animal, I'm, I'm still a girl. _Your daughter_."

"Iphigenia!" her mother cried, and Iphigenia trembled as if the winds lashing the strait outside had found their way inside the tent, and swallowed convulsively.

Her father stared at her, wide, dark eyes empty, and she thought she caught a tremble to his hand, but his mouth was firm when he came forward to take her by the arm, and the grip refused her any direction but forward. Towards the exit. 

This was not what she'd wanted! 

She'd thought, she'd hoped, that if she laid her life in his hands, if she seemed willing to go through with this terrible, awful thing, that he would find he couldn't do it. Not to her, his own daughter. Not to a girl unmarried and just barely fourteen!

All this for a war? Where other girls and women and boys, and men too, would all die? All that death weighed more than her life?

"Father---!" Iphigenia whispered, voice cracking.

Her father tightened his grip on her arm and lengthened his steps, and Iphigenia wrenched herself backwards as they strode out of the tent but got nowhere.

" _Mother_!" She threw a look over her shoulder, threw her free arm out, but all she could reach was her mother's wide, haunted and furious stare, as empty as her father's for both similar and different reasons. Her mother couldn't even give her an encouraging smile in farewell, her jaw gritted and mouth stiff. Her uncle, when Iphigenia chanced to look at him before the flap fell back, looked away.

Artemis wouldn't allow this, would she? 

She'd come flying through the rows of tents and armed soldiers and put a stop to this. Surely she would. 

As they walked, however, any darting glances Iphigenia threw around her revealed only arms and armour and men with hard faces. The sight had always been comforting before, knowledge of Mycenae's strength and power that would keep her and their family safe. Now, they seemed worse monsters than that of the Chimaera, or the Hydra. Real as they’d once been, they were only stories now, but men still existed. They were willing to let her die for their war. Were practically demanding it, in fact.

Wind tore at the hem of her dress and the short sleeves, slapped her necklaces against her throat and chin and her bracelets against her wrists, tore at her hair, and the metal bands tying her tresses up tenderized her shoulders. The plane trees around the altar groaned, and Iphigenia, though she'd been resolved not to cry any more, found another flood of it when her father raised his voice to call the goddess in prayer for the sacrifice.

Which was her.

She would not go. Not when her father's voice had briefly trembled and yet he didn’t stop.

Screaming, Iphigenia ripped herself from her father's grip, focused as he was elsewhere, but there were people gathered behind them. She quailed away from the tallest and broadest of them, like a bull in human form. Twisted away from the king of Crete. Saw Achilles shift slightly sideways in the corner of her vision and turned instantly. There was a gap there. A tiny one, but enough for a slim, young girl dressed in nothing but fine fabrics and jewellery. He wouldn't stop this, and he wouldn't speak up more than he already had, but he wouldn't stop her, either. If she could reach him. Iphigenia ducked under her father's formerly well-loved hands, the altar cold under her own as she leapt over the short side of it, fleeing much like any doe cornered by spear-wielding hunters, dogs at her heels.

Her sight was a blur, and Iphigenia missed the foot in her path, on a far sharper look-out for hands. She fell, then was caught, kicking fruitlessly at the air and the legs of the man behind her while her voice cracked on a scream, which turned into tears. She wasn't sure who she'd called for, her mother or her father. 

It wasn’t like it mattered any longer. One could not help her, the other wouldn't.

"You should've tied her up," Odysseus said as he hauled Iphigenia up to the altar again, and Iphigenia shook, then squeezed her eyes shut.

She wasn't handed over. Odysseus half sat, half draped her over the altar and held her there, and Iphigenia kept her eyes closed. She didn't want to see those dark eyes, that had for fourteen years been filled with warmth for her. She didn't want to see the emptiness, the determination and the silent begging for absolution. Why was her father doing this? Why was _Artemis_?

The knife pressed against her throat, and Iphigenia screamed.

"ARTEMIS! My lady, _please_!"

The knife went nowhere, but it also didn't press any deeper.

"Come here, come. Come then, Iphigenia, quick now."

Hands on her, larger than Odysseus', than her father's, but slim, and Iphigenia, trembling, was guided away from under the knife, out of hands that shouldn't have let go and yet did. Looked up into terrible blue eyes as soft as twilight, a mouth pulled down in a grimace. Artemis' fingers were soft where they touched her cheek.

"I'm sorry," Artemis said, and Iphigenia looked around. Looked at the deer that was now on the altar and when she blinked it was not a deer, it was her and then the knife descended.

Artemis yanked her out of the way of the spray, and Iphigenia stumbled, pressing herself close to a body that was like living flame, and as solid - more than - as she'd always thought her father was. Her father. Who was staring at the girl that was really a deer, grim-faced and resolute.

"Did--- does he k-know? That you would rescue me?"

"No." Artemis sneered and gently turned her around, walking them away through the men as the furious winds around them calmed, and then turned. Brisk, but not destroying. "His choice was to sacrifice you if he wanted to go to Troy, or to go home without blood on his hands."

Iphigenia stared in front of her, a trembling in her chest and in her hands, and blindly raised one of her hands to clutch at one of Artemis' hands. The hand turned and wrapped itself around her own, and Iphigenia sobbed. Her father hadn't known, and had sacrificed her. Thought even now that he had killed her.

The brief, wild desire to run back and inform him he hadn't died as quickly as it'd risen up, for he didn't deserve it. He'd killed her. He would have killed her, and he'd killed what he thought _was_ her.

"M-my lady, my mother..."

"No, Iphigenia. No one can know you're alive. All of them will have to live with this." Artemis stopped them when they were on the opposite end of the temenos. There was a chariot there, drawn by four antlered does, a glow about the delicate, fierce weapons those antlers were. Artemis turned her around and touched her cheek again. "But in spite of your father, you will live. Forever. I have a place you can stay until this is over. After that, I'll bring you to Olympos."

Iphigenia sniffled as she blinked a last couple tears out of her eyes, and didn't know what she was supposed to do, but she nodded. She didn't want to die, or be dead. And if her father had been willing to kill her, what better way but to live for as long as possible?


End file.
